Not a place for the dead. You are not welcome here.”
I didn’t stop until everything got quiet and the cold bled out of the room. Was she gone? I wasn’t waiting around to find out. My knees almost buckled as I pushed myself up and brushed the glass off my jeans. I couldn’t deal with this. Not now. Trying to suppress a sob, I ran down the hallway and into my room, then collapsed onto my bed. With the darkness of my pillow blocking the rest of it out, I could think.
The sage may not have worked, but the chant must have. Maeve wouldn’t have gone on her own.
Not unless she’d gotten what she’d wanted. I rolled over, mind reeling, and exhaled a shaky breath.
“Thank you,” I whispered. I wasn’t sure who I was talking to. God maybe.
“Emma.” Finn started across the room and I sat up.
“Maeve…she was here,” I said, my voice hoarse from screaming.
“Are you okay?” He placed his open palms on either side of me and leaned in so close I could feel his warmth reaching out to my skin. “Emma, answer me.”
“I…I’m okay.” I stared at him and the fear in my chest eased. “She is gone, right? I can’t feel her anymore.”
He nodded.
“Why is she doing this?” My voice cracked.
“She’s angry at me,” he said softly. “It’s not your fault. None of this is.”
He looked sad and tortured and I couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t stand any of this. I pushed myself up off the bed and made my way back into the kitchen. It looked like a disaster area. Like a freaking tornado had roared through our house and turned my baking refuge upside down. Trembling, I touched a steak knife sticking out of a cabinet. How the hell was I supposed to explain this to Mom? An entirely different kind of terror washed through me. If she saw this, she’d think I did it and send me back to Brookhaven. She couldn’t see this. I pulled out the trash can and a broom and started to sweep.
“Emma,” Finn said from behind me.
I focused on the broom in my hands. Solid. Steady. I dumped a pan full of broken glass into the trash can.
Finn pulled the broom out of my hands. “Look at me.”
I wouldn’t look at him. I couldn’t. I was about to shatter. “Do you have any idea what Mom will do to me if she comes home and finds this? I can’t…she can’t see it.”
He didn’t say anything else, but he didn’t leave either. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him throwing broken things into the trash can. He dismantled the chairs and placed them back around the table. Jerked the forks and knives out of the wall and tossed them in the trash, too. When we’d gotten the kitchen into somewhat-decent shape, I stared at the holes the forks and knives had left behind, trying to come up with a good lie for why they were there. Mom would freak out if she saw them. I’d have to drive to a hardware store first thing in the morning and buy something to cover them up before she noticed.
Finn followed me down the hall, and when I crawled back into bed, he lay down beside me. His cheek pressed against the pillow next to me, but it didn’t crease or dent under the weight of him.
“The kitchen still looks awful. Do you think she’d believe me if I told her I threw a party?” I laughed. Sort of. I pressed my fists into the mattress. Why couldn’t I stop shaking? “Maybe she’ll be too distracted with her new boyfriend to notice all the holes in the wall.”
“Do you like him?” he asked, softly, trying to change the subject. I could have picked a better one.
“I don’t want to like him,” I said. “I want my Dad back.”
Finn reached up like he was going to brush the hair from my forehead, but stopped. He let it rest in the space behind my pillow instead. “You can’t have him back,” he whispered. “Don’t punish her for that.”
“I’m not trying to punish her.” I shut my eyes and let myself feel Finn’s heat against my face. I wanted him to touch me. To make me forget what had just happened. To finish what he’d almost started in the living room what felt like a lifetime ago now, but he didn’t. “It just hurts.”
“I know it does.”
“I want to know how to stop her, Finn,” I said. “More than just incantations and sage. Tell me what to do to stop Maeve. I’ll do it.”
He watched me silently, like he didn’t know what to say. “I don’t know how to stop her. But I’m going to figure it out.”
Taking a deep breath, I opened my hand and reached out to touch him. He watched my fingers silently until I was just a breath away from his chest.
“Don’t,” he whispered.
I looked at him surprised. “Why?”
Finn’s green eyes held mine, and something in me clicked into place at that moment. He’d looked at me like this before. I remembered. Or I at least remembered the feeling inside me. Electric. Achy.
Overwhelming and right.
“Because if I touch you, I won’t be able to stop touching you.”
I pulled my hand away, but never broke eye contact. I didn’t want to lose this feeling that was making me dizzy all over. Not trusting my hands, I folded them between my face and the pillow.
“Then just stay with me,” I said.
Finn nodded against the pillow. “Okay.”
Chapter 20
Finn At times like this I thanked God I couldn’t feel. November wind rushed through me, knocking the last of the leaves from the trees around me as I waited outside Emma’s school for the bell to ring.
There’d been no sign of Maeve for almost a week. As much as I didn’t want to be away from Emma, I couldn’t stand the monotony of going through her classes with her anymore. Maeve’s silence was the perfect opportunity to get away from the useless information being pumped into my head. I’d never been great in school. While the other kids had their noses diligently shoved into books, I was somewhere else all together, staring out the window, my head in the clouds that I would eventually die in. I guess that’s why I jumped at the chance to actually fly in them. I could still hear Mama as she slammed the dishes around in the metal sink so hard I thought they might shatter.
“Finn, you can’t go. They can’t make you. You’re still a child. You haven’t even finished school.”
She was crying, tears flowing down the crevices that years of worry and hard work had already carved into her cheeks.
“For the last time, they aren’t makin’ me, Mama. I want to go. It’s what’s right.” I’d never sounded so uncertain. I was like a dog with its tail between its legs, afraid of being scolded. But then again Mama could drive the fear of God into the toughest of men, so I shouldn’t have expected to be any different. “And I’m not a kid anymore. I’m eighteen.”
“What about the farm? You know your daddy’s getting too sick to do it alone. He needs you.”
I looked away. “Henry can help. He’s sixteen now. He’s old enough.”
“You can’t wait to get out of this place, can you; away from us. Just be a man and admit it. You don’t want to end up a poor hick farmer like your daddy.” Her words trickled through me, burning holes as they went, until every emotion was draining from me like water through one of Mama’s metal strainers she used for noodles.
“I am being a man. When I come home a war hero, you’ll be proud of me. You’ll see.” I was trying to swallow back the useless tears, but they refused to be quieted. Instead of finishing the speech I had prepared, I walked over to her and placed my hands on her shoulders, smoothing out the wrinkles in her sunflower-print dress. “I love you, Mama. I’m sorry.” I placed a kiss into the brown curls that were fastened behind her ears and walked away, only stopping long enough to grab my duffel bag, which carried everything I owned in the world.